4 minute read
The New Domesticity A poetic farewell
the NEW DOMESTICITY 1
By Julianna Lawson
Old Enough
to Fly
With a riot of brown ringlets cascading over her shoulders and gossamer wings fixed firmly in place, my 4-year-old pixie stood before friends and family, chanting the flower fairy lines she had committed to memory:
Where do fairy babies lie, Till they’re old enough to fly? Here’s a likely place, I think: ‘Mid these flowers blue and pink!
She continued on, delighting us with the story of Cicely Mary Barker’s “Forget-Me-Not Fairy.” Each fairy-ballerina in our homespun troupe shared a poem: it seemed only natural that dancing and poetry should go hand-in-hand for this year-end recital. (Incidentally, we referred to our girls’ ballet class as “The Beckoning Parlour Dance Troupe.” Rehearsals took place at a friend’s home, and the girls were regularly distracted by their brothers, who were invariably—and enviably—wrestling in the parlour.)
True to the poem’s title, my daughter never forgot those lines. Indeed, our whole family committed them to memory, yet this was due more to hilarity than intention. My daughter was called upon to again share her poem, this time at a small piano recital. The recitation was captured on video, providing years of entertainment: the pixie-turned-pianist was recovering from a cold and therefore a little stuffy . . . but most memorable was the line containing an unexpected belch: “All alone—but no, you’re not, (burp!) You could never be forgot . . .” Indeed, that moment could never “be forgot.”
This pixie, now an adult, recently accompanied me on a walk around our neighborhood wetlands trail. Apples hung low on old orchard trees, and she caught their heady fragrance on the wind. We reveled in that cider-scented moment, recalling Helen Hunt Jackson’s lines,
The trees in apple orchards With fruit are bending down.
It was a fleeting moment, but one in which I was grateful to have a line of poetry from which to draw. We laughed as I continued with my favorite couplet, “From dewy lanes at morning the grapes’ sweet odors rise,” my voice bellowing down the path (and no doubt startling the girl we met around the bend). The familiar lines, like the “forget-me-not” stanza, were comforting: comforting in their rhythm, comforting in the way they described a scene so much more eloquently than prose ever could, comforting in the way they had woven their language into the fabric of our family life.
This past year, I’ve been drawn to such comfort. Ironically, I had started 2020 with the ambitious plan to read “Les Miserables.” I got about halfway through when, in March, our world turned topsy-turvy. My brain grew heavy with the weight of current events and simply could not track with denser texts. So I returned to the familiar, to the comforting, revisiting old favorites. I strolled through wild birch woods via “Anne of Green Gables,” messed about in boats with Rat and Mole in “The Wind in the Willows,” experienced grand adventures in “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Through these and other stories, I was struck by the authors’ familiarity with poetry. Of course it was no surprise to read of Anne Shirley, “The cows swung placidly down the lane, and Anne followed them dreamily, repeating aloud the battle canto from ‘Marmion’—which . . . Miss Stacy had made them learn off by heart.” continued on next page
Mention this ad and receive a $25 discount on your first visit!
In Salmon Creek next to Burgerville
360-314-2761
continued from previous page
Alas, girls today just don’t dreamily follow cows while quoting Sir Walter Scott (that I know of). But that doesn’t mean we can’t keep those lines tucked away in our hearts and minds for just the right occasion! For the past few years, I’ve delighted in dedicating each October column to poetry. What a gift we give—both to ourselves and to our children—when we grasp a line that perfectly describes a mood, scene, emotion or event! What depths of thought are forged when we stimulate our minds toward memorizing the greats!
We welcome another October and once again pay homage to the art of poetry, celebrating this “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” as described by Keats. Let us ease our rapid pace for a moment, that we might catch every hue as “autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods.” (Can you just see the picture William Allingham paints with words?) Now is the time to curl up with Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Garden of Verses” while sipping hot cider with our loved ones. I, likewise, will be slowing my pace, savoring the poetry of family life before my not-so-little pixies are “old enough to fly” and create homes of their own. Accordingly, I’ll be wrapping up “The New Domesticity” with a merry scarlet bow. It has been a joy and privilege to share my home thoughts with you these last several years, dear readers. Thank you for joining me in the pursuit of a new domesticity, one that celebrates the past and looks, ever hopefully, toward the future.
Julianna Lawson and her husband, Jamie, make their home in Vancouver with their four children, ages 15 to 22. Julianna believes that “every day should have a poem in it,” and seeks to find it, be it in the written word, the great outdoors, or a good, strong cup of tea.
